Curveball

Letters: Here is Iraq, the country of my birth, riven by sectarianism and terrorism, with millions of widows, fatherless children and war-disabled, trying to cope with their blighted lives caused by an illegal war based on lies

Letters: Even if Curveball with his wild fantasies had not existed, George W Bush and his neoconservative appointees would have invented someone of his ilk to help convince a sceptical public that Saddam was a threat to the strategically important Middle East

An Iraqi defector nicknamed Curveball who wrongly claimed that Saddam Hussein had mobile chemical weapons factories was last night at the centre of a bitter row between the CIA and Germany's intelligence agency.